Gen. David Petraeus wrote in his 2006 counterinsurgency manual that
the U.S. command headquarters should establish a "narrative" for the
counterinsurgency war -- a simple storyline that provides a framework for
understanding events, both for the population of the country in
question and for international audiences.

But this week's Taliban attacks on multiple targets in Kabul,
including the U.S. Embassy and U.S.-NATO headquarters, are the latest
and most spectacular of a long series of operations that have given the
insurgents the upper hand in establishing the narrative of the war as
perceived by the Afghan population.

Those attacks and other operations that generated headlines in 2010
have been aimed at convincing Afghans that the Taliban can strike any
target in the country, because they have their own agents within the
Afghan government's military, police and administrative organs.

In the wake of the latest attacks, the Taliban war narrative achieved
a new level of influence when a political opponent of President Hamid
Karzai associated with a prominent Pashtun warlord charged that the
Taliban could not have pulled off such a sophisticated set of
coordinated attacks in the center of the capital without help from
within the Afghan security apparatus.

The Taliban have mounted three high-profile attacks in Kabul over the
past three months involving suicide bombers and commandos with rocket-
propelled grenades.

In late June, six suicide bombers attacked the Intercontinental
Hotel, the favorite spot in the capital for westerners to hold
conferences, which left the hotel in darkness for many hours.

And in August, the insurgents carried out a much more complex attack
on the British Council, a semi-governmental agency involved in
organizing cultural events. The attack involving a suicide bombing at a
key intersection in western Kabul followed an attack on the police
checkpoint guarding the British Council, and a suicide car bomb that
destroyed the wall around the Council and allowed the team of suicide
attackers to enter the compound.

Attacks on the capital were supposed to have been made impossible by a
"Ring of Steel" around the city. After the Taliban had carried out an
attack in downtown Kabul in January 2010, the Afghan police, with
funding and advice from the U.S. military, set up a system of 25
security checkpoints around the capital that is guarded by 800 officers
of the Kabul City Police Command battalion.

Nevertheless, the insurgents were able to smuggle weapons, including
rocket-propelled grenade launchers, through the cordon and sustained an
all-day attack on the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
headquarters.

For the first time, a prominent political figure in Kabul has charged
that the attackers must indeed have had help from people within the
Afghan government's security apparatus.

Mohammed Naim Hamidzai Lalai, chairman of the Parliament's Internal
Security Committee and a political ally of powerful Pashtun warlord Gul
Agha Sherzai, charged that the "nature and scale of today's attack"
showed that the Taliban had gotten "assistance and guidance from some
security officials within the government who are their sympathizers,"
according to the New York Times.

"Otherwise it would be impossible for the planners and masterminds of
the attack to stage such a sophisticated and complex attack, in this
extremely well-guarded location without the complicity from insiders,"
he said.

Central to the Taliban strategy has been a series of assassinations
of top Afghan government figures that has demonstrated their ability to
place their own agents within the most secure spots in the country.

In mid-April, a Taliban suicide bomber wearing a policeman's uniform
was able to penetrate security outside the Kandahar police headquarters
and killed the provincial police chief.

On May 28, a Taliban suicide bomber who had been able to gain access
to the governor's compound in Takhar province detonated his suicide vest
in the hallway outside a meeting room and killed the police chief for
northern Afghanistan, Gen. Mohammad Daud Daud.

In July, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of President Karzai and
the Mafia-style political boss of Kandahar province, was killed by the
long-time head of his security detail, Sardar Mohammad. Mohammad had
been trusted by U.S. Special Forces and the CIA, who had very close ties
with Wali Karzai.

Gareth Porter (born 18 June 1942, Independence, Kansas) is an American historian, investigative journalist and policy analyst on U.S. foreign and military policy. A strong opponent of U.S. wars in Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, he has also (more...)